Magnitsky’s Mother Identifies Gross Negligence in the Investigation of Her Son’s Death, Following the Acquittal of one of the Doctors

April 19, 2012

Fol­low­ing the recent acquit­tal of one of the two prison doc­tors charged in the death of Russ­ian whis­tle-blow­ing lawyer Sergei Mag­nit­sky in state cus­tody, his moth­er has filed a 39-page com­plaint out­lin­ing over 50 points of inves­tiga­tive neg­li­gence and irreg­u­lar­i­ties in the case mate­ri­als point­ing to the state cov­er-up of the actu­al cir­cum­stances of Mr Magnitsky’s arrest, ill-treat­ment and mur­der in cus­tody, as well the motives to kill him as an “incon­ve­nient” witness. 

“Inves­ti­ga­tors have cov­ered up the cru­el repres­sion of my son for his stance against cor­rupt offi­cials whom he had exposed act­ing as part of a crim­i­nal con­spir­a­cy through which they for many years have been steal­ing bil­lions of rubles from the Russ­ian bud­get,” said Magnitsky’s moth­er in her com­plaint filed with the Russ­ian Inves­tiga­tive Committee.

“The inves­ti­ga­tion has been used to deflect atten­tion from my son’s polit­i­cal­ly moti­vat­ed per­se­cu­tion. The offi­cials exposed by him in mas­sive bud­get thefts, and who per­se­cut­ed, and killed him, remain free and live in lux­u­ry cre­at­ed with illic­it pro­ceeds,” says Ms Natalia Magnitskaya.

On the basis of new evi­dence described in her com­plaint, Ms Mag­nit­skaya is request­ing the Russ­ian Inves­tiga­tive Com­mit­tee to open a crim­i­nal case against law enforce­ment and oth­er offi­cials, includ­ing two med­ical prison staff, Lar­isa Litvi­no­va and Dmit­ry Kra­tov, for the crime of tor­ture instead of neg­li­gence, and to open an inves­ti­ga­tion into those offi­cials who com­mit­ted per­jury and fal­si­fied the case documents. 

Ms Mag­nit­skaya has also appealed to have the Inves­tiga­tive Com­mit­tee appoint Physi­cians for Human Rights, a US NGO that spe­cial­izes in post­mortem exam­i­na­tions in inter­na­tion­al human rights cas­es, to car­ry out an inde­pen­dent med­ical study and allow them access to Magnitsky’s med­ical archive, some­thing that the Russ­ian author­i­ties have repeat­ed­ly refused the fam­i­ly for the last two years.

Final­ly, she asks Deputy Gen­er­al Pros­e­cu­tor Vik­tor Grin to recuse him­self from over­see­ing the case because of his con­flict of inter­est from his pre­vi­ous actions of detain­ing and pros­e­cut­ing Mag­nit­sky on false grounds and ignor­ing Magnitsky’s com­plaints about his health and prison conditions. 

Among the most impor­tant areas of neg­li­gence out­lined in the com­plaint Ms Mag­nit­skaya filed were the fol­low­ing points:

• The crime scene at Butyr­ka deten­tion cen­ter was vis­it­ed for the first time by inves­ti­ga­tors only 15 months after the crime was com­mit­ted, on 24 Feb­ru­ary 2011,
• Inves­ti­ga­tors did not seize the crit­i­cal CCTV footage from the crime scene at Matrosskaya Tishi­na deten­tion cen­ter which now appears to be missing;
• Inves­ti­ga­tors failed to iden­ti­fy all eye wit­ness­es who had seen Mag­nit­sky in the last four days of his life when his lawyers were pre­clud­ed from see­ing him by prison guards;
• Inves­ti­ga­tors failed to inves­ti­gate the vio­lence against Mag­nit­sky by prison guards in the last hour of his life when rub­ber batons were used, and when doc­tors were not allowed to see him;
• Inves­ti­ga­tors did not deter­mine the rea­sons why Mag­nit­sky was placed in “the worst cells in Butyr­ka”, accord­ing to case files, and trans­ferred 6 times between deten­tion cen­ters and 21 times between cells, often at night;
• The autop­sy and the offi­cial foren­sic med­ical study were car­ried out in breach of the pro­to­cols, with no doc­tor present and with all med­ical records absent; fam­i­ly requests for an inde­pen­dent med­ical study have been rejected;
• Inves­ti­ga­tors did not require to con­duct any of the basic med­ical stud­ies, includ­ing blood tests and organ tests, which would be nec­es­sary to con­firm any med­ical con­clu­sion into his death;
• Inves­ti­ga­tors did not cross-exam­ine the offi­cials in light of con­tra­dic­tions in their testimonies;
• Inves­ti­ga­tors refused to inter­ro­gate any of the high-rank­ing sus­pects from the Gen­er­al Prosecutor’s Office, Inte­ri­or Min­istry and Prison ser­vice, who autho­rised Magnitsky’s arrest, deten­tion and who refused his com­plaints about inhu­mane treat­ment in custody;
• Inves­ti­ga­tors failed to col­lect and analyse com­plaints filed by Mag­nit­sky with state bod­ies about his inhu­mane treat­ment and denials of his complaints;
• Inves­ti­ga­tors did not inves­ti­gate who autho­rized the jobs and pro­mo­tions for two prison doc­tors, Kra­tov and Litvi­no­va, after Mr Magnitsky’s death;
• Inves­ti­ga­tors did not probe the involve­ment of the Russ­ian Fed­er­al Secu­ri­ty Ser­vice in Magnitsky’s per­se­cu­tion in spite of the evi­dence of their involve­ment in the case file;
• Inves­ti­ga­tors did not inves­ti­gate the alle­ga­tion of cor­rup­tion and con­flict of inter­est of offi­cials accused by Magnitsky.

The com­plaint by Ms Mag­nit­skaya and her lawyer Niko­lai Gorokhov points to the breach by the Russ­ian Inves­tiga­tive Com­mit­tee of Arti­cles 7 and 12 of the UN Anti-tor­ture Con­ven­tion and P. 9 of the UN Prin­ci­ples on the Effec­tive Pre­ven­tion and Inves­ti­ga­tion of Extra-legal, Arbi­trary and Sum­ma­ry Exe­cu­tions, which call for “thor­ough, prompt and impar­tial” inves­ti­ga­tion, “ade­quate autop­sy”, and “col­lec­tion and analy­sis of all phys­i­cal and doc­u­men­tary evi­dence and state­ments from witnesses.”

The Russ­ian author­i­ties have exon­er­at­ed 58 out of 60 offi­cials on the U.S. Helsin­ki Com­mis­sion list of those involved in the tor­ture and death of Mag­nit­sky and cor­rup­tion he had uncov­ered. For two years, there have been no sus­pects in the case of Mr Mag­nit­sky’ death. When in light of this impuni­ty, the West­ern gov­ern­ments start­ed to intro­duce visa and eco­nom­ic sanc­tions, the Russ­ian gov­ern­ment charged two doc­tors for inad­ver­tent neg­li­gence, instead of wil­ful tor­ture, and then exon­er­at­ed one of the doc­tors due to the expiry of the statute of lim­i­ta­tions for that offence.

Ms Mag­nit­skaya points out that the inves­ti­ga­tion into her son’s death can­not be viewed as impar­tial as it is con­trolled by the same Deputy Gen­er­al Pros­e­cu­tor of Rus­sia Vik­tor Grin and his sub­or­di­nates who have cov­ered up the per­pe­tra­tors of the $230 mil­lion theft exposed by her son and who were respon­si­ble for his tor­ture in cus­tody, and who have failed to pro­tect his rights as required by Arti­cle 51 of the Russ­ian Law on Detention.

Comments

• Link